A Poor Showing for the British Pound

Brace yourself for some bad news – we have the results of sterling’s efforts on the currency markets last week, and it does not make for very good reading. We hoped for better news to bring you, but instead we have the data below.

An overview of the currency markets for February 26th – March 2nd, 2018

As the week began, the British pound was on an exchange rate of 1.3985. This soon improved to 1.4028 to begin the week, which was an encouraging sign. However, we know better than to assume one good day will translate into a good week. Indeed, the next three days were anything but good, with a series of losses sending the pound tumbling to 1.3749 by Thursday evening. We edged back to 1.3784 by Friday, but this was far from ideal and represented a loss for the week.

Would the pattern be any different against the euro? Well, it would, but not in the way we hoped. The pound began trading on 1.1371 on Monday before rising to 1.1386 by the end of the day. If we thought we might be in for three poor days next, we were right… but it turned out to lead into four poor days to make the rest of the week a disappointment from every angle. We finished Friday’s trading on 1.1195 – significantly lower once more.

By now the pattern was looking familiar, and we saw yet again how the pound sometimes performed in a similar manner against other currencies. Sterling repeated its feat against the Hong Kong dollar as well, beginning on 10.941 before dropping steadily over the next three days to reach 10.761 by Friday. There was a slight bump that day, and that enabled us to close the week on 10.792 here.

Moving on, we should see whether the pound did well against the New Zealand currency. Beginning on 1.9176 last week, we rose slightly to 1.9183 on Monday night, before repeating the same pattern we’d seen against the euro. This meant we had no further good results, and the pound dropped to 1.9048 by the time the week was done with.

We had little hope we could achieve anything better against the Australian dollar, but could we be proven wrong here? We did see a slightly different pattern, although we began by rising from 1.7875 to 1.7888 on Monday. We then had two drops in a row that took us to 1.7685 on Wednesday night. A surprise came on Thursday in the shape of a boost to 1.7788, but since we fell to 1.7784 on Friday, it still represented a loss for the week.

Notable events in the world of currency

Only a slight drop against the Canadian dollar

Here, we managed to minimize the losses experienced by the British pound. Three good days out of five meant the opening rate of 1.7755 dropped only marginally to 1.7754 last week.

Another drop against the Swiss franc though

Well, we could not hope for reasonable news everywhere, as we have already seen. Here, the pound opened trading for the week on 1.3082 before falling to 1.2888 by the time Friday was over.

More of the same against the Icelandic krona as well

We could not manage to stall the losses everywhere, it seemed. The pound opened the week on 140.724 against the krona, before dropping to 138.575 at the end of the week.

So, we have little in the way of good news to bring you this time around. We can only hope next week will be better, but there is no way to tell whether this could be the case. It has been a troublesome end to February for the pound, and not the best beginning to March either. Perhaps the new month will bring better news for us, but it remains to be seen whether that comes true.

We shall be here next week as per usual though, so if you want to know what happens next, you know where to come.